Los Angeles Gallerists

The thing I don't get, Monte, is that you're this city's leading clothier, yet you come into my gallery with your pants hiked up over your belly button and your shirt blousing out like a muffin top. So no, I will not sell you the Byars. That same no applies to the Huebler.

Intriguing article by Catherine Wagley in Contemporary Art Review L.A. on mid-20th century L.A. gallerists Dwan, Copely, Butler and Mizuno. Only a matter of time before this history gets the film treatment.

But what would that history look like, as film? Yet another case of women (gallerists) serving men (artists), or a case of artists giving half of everything they make to their dealers in exchange for whatever their dealers make from the sale of their artists' work?

photo: Malcolm Lubliner

History Painting

Allegory is not a problem. It has been with us, carried along with church and state, private and public capital, and the development of industrial processes. It has been readymade for some time. Suspended disbeliefs are fabricated and squeezed into tubular packaging, woven canvas pulled from looms of mass production, thin wood sheet layered, glued and heated together to form a rigid substrate for our pleasure. Allegory has history, a production value and the results are familiar.

Canadian Art (Spring, 2017)

A couple days ago Canadian Art posted an "adapted" version of its hard-copy feature article.

The article, written by Sam Cotter, is entitled "Break It Down", while the digital version carries a more informational title -- "10 Artists Who Disrupt the Status Quo".

(The status quo? Really? Haven't heard those words in awhile -- which hardly bodes well for an existing state of affairs.)

Not knowing who Sam is, I googled him and found an artist who writes. An example of Sam's art is his On Location series:

Sam's picture (Number 4 in the series?) brought to mind another artist who is something of a disrupter. Or at least an artist who has made a work "about" disrupting -- Jeff Wall's The Stumbling Block (1991):

Mars News

In this unprecedented art world event that most Americans did not vote for yet received electoral college approval for comes a four-year exhibition entitled Office of the Presidency, featuring mostly white male American artists whose practices are based in performance, sculpture and text.

Included in this exhibition, which opened on January 20th, 2017 in Washington, D.C. and is said to feature multiple international platforms, are Mike Pence, Sean Spicer and Donald Trump. The curator of the exhibition is Steve Bannon.

When asked to elaborate on the exhibition and its numerous objects, events, gestures and orders, Bannon declined comment. However, rumours abound of a massive sculptural project on the U.S.-Mexico border. "Bigger than Serra," said one source, who did not wish to be identified. "Better than Christo and Jeanne Claude," said another.

For more information, click here.

Ekwivalencies

Will I ever visit an art museum again and not hear someone suggest to someone else that Art and the Art World are synonymous, or are those days over? Is Contemporary Art now an atmosphere that exists independent of what we think of when we think of space and time? A Strictly Ballroom land mass, a Devil's Island of the mind?

"Again and again the same situation…"

During a recent walk through a large art museum I overheard a fifty-something woman tell her adult daughter that the Art World that administers Art -- that is Art -- is "sick. It's gross. It's just like high school."

Yes, the history of Art is full of cliques, movements and isms -- popular people and invisible people -- but divisions like these are endemic to any gathering, be it in politics or in economics, in churches or in moques.

But what if the Art World is high school, at least as middle-aged people remember high school? Are there equivalencies? Is it worth our while to go down that road?

In the high school that is the Art World, then, would the artists be the jocks?

 Would the curators be the cheerleaders?

And would the critics be the yearbook committee?

As for the gallerists, would they be the teachers?

 And the collectors -- would they be the substitute teachers?